


Until Dawn

by uhpockuhlipz



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 05:53:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10984725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uhpockuhlipz/pseuds/uhpockuhlipz
Summary: Lena hasn't talked to Kara in over a month. Not since the invasion ended.An add-on for 2x22





	Until Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Idk what this is??? I hope it isn't shitty lmao enjoy. xx

Kara doesn’t call.

She doesn’t call and she doesn’t call and she doesn’t call and Lena doesn’t call either because she’s not sure if she’s supposed to.

(She doesn’t know if Kara will answer.)

She wants to. God, she really wants to. But every time she scrolls through her contacts and her thumb hovers over Kara’s name, her heart starts to race with a fear she can’t control or contain. Because what if she doesn’t answer? What if she sees Lena’s name on her screen and sets her phone aside? What if she doesn’t want to talk to her anymore after what Lena had done?

(Her heart would shatter into a million pieces.)

So Lena doesn’t call and she doesn’t call and she doesn’t call and Kara doesn’t call either and Lena spends too much time staring at her phone willing it to ring when she’s supposed to be working.

Scotch replaces water in the decanter she keeps in her office and when she’s working late, when it’s dark and she’s alone in her office and Supergirl once again fails to come see her, she pours some into a tumbler and drinks.

Oh, not a lot. She hates it, the way it numbs her senses, the way it makes her tongue loose, the way it makes it harder to be in control of herself. But she drinks enough to dull the sharp edges of her fear, her sadness, and that’s more than she usually allows herself.

(Luthors don’t cry. They turn to other vices.)

Sometimes she sits for hours staring through her dark window, knees curled to her chest with the half-drunk scotch still clutched in her hand, and the hours pass without her realizing. And when they do, she toes off her shoes and stretches out onto her couch, sleeping there until dawn creeps through the wide windows and wakes her again. Then she rises, cleans herself up, and changes into one of the spare outfits she keeps stored in a hidden closet just outside of her office.

And then she faces another day.

(Luthors don’t cry, no, but they hurt. Oh, do they hurt.)

//

She grows so used to the silence that she stops expecting it to be filled.

She still hopes it will, she hopes she can be forgiven, but weeks pass and it feels like maybe she never will be. Lena stops checking her phone every five minutes (though she keeps it close at hand, set beside her on her desk or in her lap or at the table) and focuses more on work. Because she’s a Luthor and as such, she has a responsibility to her family’s legacy, to their shareholders, to herself. She can’t shirk her duties here. No one can run L-Corp the way Lena runs it. No one cares as much about the changes she wants to make as Lena does.

She’s fighting to change the world, to save it. She can’t let heartbreak distract her from that.

(At night she stands on her balcony and waits, but she never comes.)

Lena can’t blame Kara for it. She really can’t. Lena is the one who built the portal that brought the invasion to Earth. Lena agreed to marry Kara’s boyfriend at some point. And Lena built the device that poisoned the air, making it impossible for the man Kara loved to stay on Earth, or to return to it ever again.

And she knows it had to be done. She knows there was no other choice. She doesn’t regret it because saving the world? That always has to take priority over whatever she’s feeling. It meant sending her mother to prison. It meant letting Jack die to save Supergirl. And it meant making Kara hate her to stop an alien invasion.

But knowing all of that doesn’t make it easier, and it certainly doesn’t make her miss Kara any less.

//

She’s so used to the silence now that when it is finally broken, Lena isn’t prepared to handle it.

It’s late, she’s sure, though she’d lost track of time hours before. She stands on her balcony, head tilted back, eyes closed, and lets the heaviness of the sky she’d helped to clear press down on her so that it seemed to live in every nerve ending. The stars feel accusatory and she’s scared to look at them now, scared to see one soaring across the sky that might actually be the ship of the man she’d forced away from here.

And as she’s standing there, she hears the light thud of boots.

It send her heart skittering and she looks down quickly, staring across at the woman she hadn’t seen in over a month. Supergirl stares back, her eyes blue and sharp with a wariness Lena hated to see there, and Lena swirls her scotch nervously before looking away again. Down this time, down at the city, a reminder of why she’d done what she’d done.

“You don’t drink,” Supergirl notes, and when Lena looks back at her, she’s staring down at the glass in her hand. Lena studies it too, swirling it again, her shoulders lifting in a small shrug.

“We all have our vices,” she murmurs.

“Not you.” Supergirl steps closer, just barely, a fraction of a step really. “Unless really disgusting food counts as a vice.” And she says it almost lightly, but her eyes are somber and focused on Lena again, flickering from feature to feature like she’s trying to memorize them.

“Are we done pretending I don’t know, then?” she asks, her attempt at the same lightness failing when her voice breaks. She blinks once, twice, hard, and wills away the sting that burns the back of her eyes.

(Crying won’t save them.)

“Lena...” Supergirl – no, _Kara –_ reaches out, her fingers just barely brushing Lena’s elbow, and Lena closes her eyes at the way such a simple gesture seems to make everything come alive inside of her again. “Why haven’t you called?”

Her eyes snap open at the words and she stares back at Kara in absolute disbelief, grief throbbing low in her chest

“Why haven’t you?” she asks in return, jerking her arm away and leaning back against the railing. She tries to appear casual, but her hands are shaking and she has to reach out to set her glass down carefully on the railing.

Kara doesn’t seem to know how to react to that. Her hand hovers between them still, her eyes moving over Lena’s face again. Her mouth opens and closes a couple of times and then finally she drops her arm and curls her fingers into the edges of her cape.

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“Because you’re mad at me.” Lena nods. It’s what she’d expected, after all. “I made Mon-El leave and you hate me.”

“What? Lena, no.”

“Don’t lie, Kara. It insults both of our intelligence.”

“I’m _not_ lying.” She steps closer again, more determined this time, closing the distance between them until she’s pulling Lena into her arms and Lena’s heart is jumping in her chest.

(Too close, too close, after far too long.)

“I could never, ever hate you,” she whispers against the top of Lena’s head, one hand curling into her hair while the other splays across her back, warm and sure and gentle. “I thought… I thought you were angry with me. When you didn’t message, when you didn’t ask, I thought you blamed me for what happened and I… I didn’t know what to say.”

“Blamed you?” Lena draws back slightly, confused, head spinning. “Why would it be your fault.”

“Because he stayed. Because he stayed and Rhea did all of what she did because he chose to stay with me.” She laughs a little, pulling a hand back to knuckle away a tear that sneaks past her guard. Lena watches, transfixed, her fingers itching to reach up and catch the next one herself. “And all this time, you thought I… Never. I could never blame you for this.”

“You loved him. I made him leave.”

Kara shakes her head. “You gave me the choice, Lena. You gave me the remote. I’m the one who chose that, and Rhea is the one who made me.”

“You loved him,” she repeats in a whisper, her heart throbbing. “We shouldn’t ever be forced to lose the people we love.”

Kara shakes her head and pulls Lena into her arms again, face buried in her hair, her arms holding a little tighter than they ever had before. Not sure what else to do, she curls her arms around her waist, clutches the fabric of her cape, and holds her in return.

“Then let’s not lose each other,” she whispers and Lena can’t breathe. She can’t breathe and she can’t breathe and she can’t breathe and the sob that’s choking her breaks free until she’s weeping against Kara’s chest and Kara is holding her close, her own tears wet against Lena’s temple.

//

Kara lifts the desk and presses it against the wall and Lena rolls away the chairs and they lay side by side on the small shag carpet in the center of the room with their hands curled together between them. There are no lights on and they stare through the glass at what stars they can see through the light pollution of the city.

“I don’t miss him anymore,” Kara confesses quietly. “Not really. It doesn’t hurt the way it should.”

“Maybe it hurts exactly as it should,” Lena whispers back. “How do you know what the right way to hurt feels like?”

“Because it doesn’t hurt like it does when I’m missing you.”

Lena breathes. She breathes and she breathes and she breathes and she rolls over until she’s in Kara’s arms and they fall asleep like that until dawn comes again.


End file.
